Where have all the statesmen gone?
If you’ve been around Convention of States for long enough, you’ve likely heard our opponents rue that public servants like the Founding Fathers don’t exist anymore. Indeed, you won’t find many men of action amongst their coterie, but it would be an overstatement to suggest they don’t exist at all.
True statesmen may be in short supply, but perhaps we’re looking in the wrong places.
In the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, for example, one of America’s leading public servants and Founding Fathers would have been found tending to the sick in his office on Hanover Street in Boston. Dr. Joseph Warren, a Harvard graduate, had served the people of Boston during a smallpox epidemic in 1764, eventually rising to play a prominent role in the Massachusetts hotbed of liberty and revolution.
Writing for the Boston Gazette under the pseudonym “A True Patriot,” Warren offered provocative commentary on British tyranny (specifically the Townsend Acts), which the Royal Governor, Sir Francis Bernard, viewed as libelous. The doctor would not have cared. It was “impossible,” he wrote of Bernard, “ to feel any Esteem for a Man like you.” He then concluded his letter, published February 29, 1768, with a goading jingle:
“If such Men are by God appointed,
The Devil may be the Lord’s anointed.”
Warren was earnest. The following month, he clarified that he possessed “the most sacred regard to the characters of all good men, and would sooner cut my hand from my body, than strike at the reputation of an honest member of the community: But there are circumstances, in which not justice alone, but humanity itself, obliges us to hold up the villain to view, and expose his guilt, to prevent his destroying the innocent.”
“My design,” he explained, “was to compare wicked men, and especially wicked magistrates, to those enemies to mankind the devils, and to intimate that the devils themselves might boast of divine authority to seduce and ruin mankind, with as much reason and justice, as wicked rulers can pretend to derive from God, or from his word, a right to oppress, harrass and enslave their fellow-creatures.”
It was, no doubt, a sensitive topic, but Warren had found his place speaking on behalf of Boston’s increasingly defiant revolutionaries. “With Pleasure I hear the general Voice of this People in favor of freedom,” he remarked.
A close companion of Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere, Warren participated in many of the pre-war milestones, orchestrating the Boston Tea Party, raising armed militias in and around Boston, and dispatching Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride. Although he was not directly involved in the 1770 Boston Massacre, he delivered a passionate speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the event, urging his hearers to channel the bravery of their ancestors in the inevitable fight to come. Disparaging his own abilities as an orator, Warren nevertheless offered a forceful tribute to the ongoing struggle for liberty.
“Our fathers having nobly resolved never to wear the yoke of despotism, and seeing the European world, at the time, through indolence and cowardice, falling a prey to tyranny, bravely threw themselves upon the bosom of the ocean, determined to find a place in which they might enjoy their freedom, or perish in the glorious attempt,” he described. “Approving heaven beheld the favourite ark dancing upon the waves, and graciously preserved it until the chosen families were brought in safety to these western regions.”
As Warren saw it, the pioneers and pilgrims who settled the New World had sown the seeds for eventual independence; now, it was up to him and his colleagues to finish the job. Little did he know, however, that his days leading that charge were limited: three months later, while fighting at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the 34-year-old patriot was shot in the face and instantly killed. His body, tossed into a common grave, was identified months later by Revere based on past dental work.
It was a cruel and ironic tragedy that the man who had given so much for liberty died before the Declaration of Independence had even been conceived. He would never know that his dream and vision eventually blossomed into the freest nation in the history of the world, nor that his sacrifice had not been in vain. Unlike Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, Dr. Warren never rose to higher power. He died as he had lived: serving others.
His story calls to mind the life of another physician-statesman: Dr. Tom Coburn, who Convention of States President Mark Meckler called the nation’s “greatest living statesman.”
This past March marked the five-year anniversary of Coburn’s passing. After treating an estimated 15,000 patients and delivering 4,000 babies at his maternal and family practice in Oklahoma and serving as a deacon and Sunday School teacher in his local church, the doctor became convinced that God wanted him to serve in politics. Elected in 1994 to represent Oklahoma’s 2nd congressional district, Coburn eventually rose to the U.S. Senate, pledging only to serve two terms.
However, even that proved too much. Disillusioned by federal inaction and corruption, Coburn resigned from his seat after only nine years and rededicated himself — with all the passion of a Dr. Joseph Warren — to a new cause: the grassroots movement for an Article V convention.
“Our founders saw public service and politics as a calling rather than a career,” he noted. “As a citizen, I am now convinced that I can best serve my own children and grandchildren by shifting my focus elsewhere.”
Although nearing the end of his life and battling with cancer, Coburn was zealous about his work. “Life’s intended to be a battle,” he believed, and he fought wholeheartedly until the end of his days.
Much like Dr. Warren, Tom Coburn was disinterested in fame or power. He simply wanted to serve a cause bigger than himself. Both men died before they realized their dreams — in Warren’s case, his bold vision for freedom; in Coburn’s, the hope for an Article V convention. But did that make their labors any less worthwhile? Of course not.
Dr. Joseph Warren and Dr. Tom Coburn — the Physician Statesmen — remind us that the fight for freedom is always worth it. Moreover, Coburn, in particular, proves that statesmen — the indispensable backbone of the American Republic — still do exist. If we want to join their illustrious ranks, we must resolve to do our duty even if our part in the story is destined to end before the journey is complete. As J. R. R. Tolkien put it, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Tonight, on the eve of the 4th of July, it’s incumbent on us to remember the price others have paid for our freedom. Many men have given their lives for a victory they knew they’d never see; let’s not take it for granted.
